


Desperation

by Holly



Category: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holly/pseuds/Holly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desperation makes a man do strange things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desperation

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to NJ for beta dedication above and beyond the call of duty!
> 
> Written for Becky for Yuletide 2007.

 

 

Long after - or what seems like long after - Dan remembers thinking that when he started bartering with Wade in that Bisbee bar he assumed that he was gambling with his life, and when Wade was arrested he figured he'd lost. He was desperate, and desperation makes a man do strange things. Volunteering to see Wade to the station. Demanding fair compensation from the railroad. Bringing William along because he didn't want a hardened criminal to see the boy and his father fighting. Stupid things, insane things he'd never have considered if not for the fact that he was distracted and half-mad with worry. The minutes ticked down now toward 3pm, and an undignified death for them both, right in front of him. But Wade was lighthearted and relaxed, and Dan felt a little of the tension of the last few months easing out when he let himself feel the same. It was an odd thing, he thought as he put down the gun. Nothing in Wade so much as hinted at 'desperation.'

\---

Bringing that herd down right into the road, now that was _genius_ , Charlie thought.

The others were 'resting,' which in Charlie's opinion was the biggest waste of time since the Pinkertons, but if it gave him time to sit by the fire and wish away their goddamned snoring in his own head, that was all right. His mind was occupied, as it very often was, with Ben Wade. The way the boss never rambled on about his lost past like the rest of them did, that was refreshing. The way he would ride through a town where he was wanted (he was wanted in all of them) just to see what the people were like. Of course, sometimes he stayed, found some woman or other, and sent Charlie back with the others. Charlie'd learned to deal with it. In this gang, you either dealt with it or you landed in a ditch with a bullet in your skull.

Charlie knew he was going to be Wade's second in command at least a few months after he joined up, after he'd blown away old Jonathan Wilkerson from near two hundred paces with one eye swollen shut. Wade was impressed, he could tell, and it took a lot to impress a man like that. And soon after that, Wade looked a little more often in his direction. It was that intense, unshakeable stare that Charlie began to recognize. The rest of them knew to clear out when Wade got that look. And that, as Charlie's momma used to say, was that.

But the boss was always a little strange in the head, Charlie mused, now thoughtlessly cleaning his gun. He drew pictures. He looked relaxed around the law. He slept with women. But he was a hell of a good shot and had the quickest draw Charlie'd ever seen, and that might have been enough. For now, it was enough. But Charlie had never liked to share.

"She has nicer legs than you, Charlie," Wade would say with that broad grin, just before heading off to some whore's room, and Charlie had to admit he was right. It didn't mean he didn't resent the hell out of those girls, though. Hours later he always wanted to sneak away and make them pay for what they'd done. Would have, too, if he didn't think the boss was watching. The boss was always respectful toward women. Charlie didn't think he'd ever pick up that habit.

With luck, he thought, snapping the chamber shut and giving it a spin, nobody outside the gang traveling with them noticed. If they did, though, that was all right. Ben Wade had enough of a reputation that the whispering didn't make a damn bit of difference.

\---

It was late by the time they made camp that first evening, and when Dan volunteered to take the first watch no one objected. He stared out into the dark at first, the sight a far cry from familiar plains he knew so well. He thought of the long parade of nights, all spent looking out across the ruin of what used to be his land. A drier climate, they'd suggested. Well you didn't get much damned drier than that one. A smoking wreck for a barn and his hands as parched and empty as the dammed-up creek that supposedly crossed the place. He made bitter faces into the dark, hardly aware that he did.

Wade watched him with interest, unseen.

Nights at home, Dan's merciless thoughts continued, the wind whistled across the land so loud he could hardly sleep. But the whistling of Mark's breath through swollen lungs was even louder in that dark, closed room. Least, it seemed so to him. And out here in the wild he wasn't sure he could sleep without it.

"Fine family you've got there," Wade said out of nowhere.

"Shut up, Wade."

Wade hadn't the grace to look insulted, just shrugged from the cover of his blanket. Son of a bitch had probably stolen one from a saddlebag.

"Your boys look to be fine men in the making," Wade said. "Very fine. That older one's got a spark about him."

Dan ignored him, or seemed to.

"You know the sort of spark I'm talking about? Rebellious. That'll serve him well later on, mark my words. Very well," he mused, staring off into the dark.

"Don't tell me. You were rebellious yourself as a youngster," Dan snapped, rising beautifully to the bait.

"Actually I was a very obedient child," Wade said, looking the absolute picture of innocence. His voice took on that tinge of honesty that Dan couldn't quite figure out. "Wish I'd had a bit more of what your boy's got in him; I'd have gotten a lot farther."

Dan didn't have anything to say to that.

\---

Some time later, McElroy was on watch, grim and silent. Wade was awake, unconcerned, and watching Dan Evans sleep. Strange thing, he thought for the hundredth time, a man like that coming out here on a fool's errand. An act of desperation. He didn't for a second believe all that bullshit about justice and how a man like him should be brought to meet it. As if anyone on this earth could do such a thing. He chuckled to himself and returned his attention to the noble frown on Dan Evans's sleeping face. Evans was in it for the money, Wade thought, as well he should be, same as the rest of them. Big world, and you always had to be looking out for your little piece of it.

The thing was, Evans had looked like he'd half-believed that bit about justice, but only half. If he'd believed it all he'd have been as bad as McElroy, so convinced of his own rightness that it didn't matter what he did in its name. Evans had doubt, like his son, and doubt was a mighty thing in a man like that. Wade took pleasure in twisting the doubts of a man like Butterfield; weak-willed, soft, and too much fun alive to be disposed of. But Evans was cut from a different cloth, so to speak, and his uncertainty was what made him stronger in Wade's view. Gave him potential. Made him interesting. Charlie didn't have any doubt; his faith in himself and in the untouchable Ben Wade were absolute. Maybe that was Charlie's whole problem.

Wade frowned at the turn his thoughts had taken. Maybe on this watch he should get some sleep.

\---

The real bitch about having a gang was that the amount of grunt work done rarely compensated for the sheer volume of stupid. Wade had busted them all out of hell, and they called this fatalistic bullshit _gratitude_? One decoy baited coach and they were ready to give it up. Well, quitting was unthinkable. Charlie risked a glance back at the ragtag mob following. They looked disgruntled and mutinous and all of them ridiculous as they followed at a bumpy trot.

When they got the boss back, he'd settle all of this. Discipline was crucial; without discipline they were likely to all end up like Tommy.

"Yeah! You want to end up like Tommy, motherfuckers?" he screamed over his shoulder at the top of his lungs. He drew his gun suddenly and fired over the heads of the others. Without looking back to see the fallout, he urged his horse into a gallop.

\---

They rode on the next morning and left Tucker behind. Dan was silent as ever, and McElroy and Potter were endlessly bickering on about McElroy's wound. Butterfield - well, he was somewhere. Wade never paid him much mind, if he could help it.

There was a lean coyote poking around near the road before the sound of hooves caught up with it. It took one look at them and hesitated, as though measuring whether it could take them in a fight. Wade grinned at it conspiratorially. The thing looked like it would cheat, too. It would be hiding two or three revolvers in that rough-worn coat if it'd had fur enough to cover them. As it was, though, the season had been tough and the coyote retreated into the brush, outnumbered. The animal wasn't stupid, after all. Wade looked back at Dan on the horse behind him and grinned. Dan shuddered involuntarily; in the uncertain light of dawn that grin was lean and wolfish.

\---

Wade's mind, appropriately, was full of dark thoughts. They were coming; he could feel the thudding hooves of their horses in his bones and in the dry hum of the earth. Charlie was dependable that way. His loyalty was animalistic, unthinking - the whole gang were animals, but if they were all wild creatures then Charlie was a half-mad wolf. You could depend on that. You could depend on him to shoot straight, ride fast, control the rest when he had to, get the job - whatever it was - done, and on his utter loyalty. Charlie never understood the finer points of things, but that was all right. There was plenty a time came and went that Wade could understand those points but didn't bother.

His horse stumbled on a loose stone, slipping sideways, and Wade pulled her unconsciously back onto the path. Sure, Charlie was dependable, but you couldn't even put him in the same category with Dan, he thought. It'd be a shame if all those interesting contradictions were blown away in a hurricane of violence. Wade bent over and spit in the dirt rolling endlessly beneath the horses' hooves.

\---

Contention, Arizona. They'd been in that flowery little room for hours. Wade looked down at his picture, up at the man by the window, down again. His pencil was sure, calming: _snick... snick... scratch_.

"What do you figure, Dan?"

Dan watched the clock: Tick. Tick. Tick. That was another three seconds of their lives, right there, and he couldn't seem to stop watching.

"You ever do things you regret?"

Dan didn't answer, just kept his eyes on the second hand.

"I don't. Maybe hangin' around that bar long enough to pay you for everything under the sun, maybe I regret that. And here I am offering you a fortune. 'S what they call irony, I believe."

Dan glanced up momentarily, but didn't otherwise respond. Wade considered it progress anyhow.

"The rest of it, though... no," he said, adding the signature on his drawing. _Snick, snick... snick_. "Things pass by, opportunities, and if you don't take them as they come they just go up in smoke."

He stared at the frilly curtains, lost in memories. Charlie, a cocksure grin on his face and uncertainty in his eyes. A faceless woman, breasts smashed up against windowpanes. A hundred bridal suites, none of them quite like this.

"So, being an opportunity-loving man, I took them."

Dan looked up again to find Wade staring at him, unblinking, unnerving.

"It's in man's nature to take what he wants, Dan," Wade said quietly.

Dan looked up.

"Yeah," Dan said after a pause. With infinite care he lowered the rifle until it leaned against the windowsill. "I guess that sometimes, maybe, it is."

 

 

 


End file.
